The sun was already high in the sky the next morning when I woke up with one hell of a headache. I felt like shit and I reeked of alcohol.

A couple of my teammates had come over last night and gotten drunk with me, but they left early, around midnight, and I was still cranking. Goddamn I’d been so shitfaced. I wanted to erase the memory of everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours. Yet the more I drank last night, the more depressing things seemed. Usually, it was the other way around.

You know when Benny Jenks, the biggest, goofiest, drunkest guy on the team, is telling you to “take it easy,” that you’ve moved past happy-drunk mode and into “I’ll probably only remember a few things about this night” mode.

I wanted to forget everything. I wanted to forget all about my shitty performance on the field. I wanted to forget that I’d probably be getting some sort of trumped-up charges brought against me for trying to help Tate. His father had lawyers behind him who were surely looking to milk every dollar they could from the Jake Napleton Empire.

They’d take me for all I was worth.

And there was plenty to take. While I didn’t mind spending the money I’d earned through my baseball contracts and endorsement deals, I hadn’t blown through it either. I had few vices.

Soon, I’d be reduced to what I started my life as: another loser foster kid from the South Side of Chicago whose potential was going unfulfilled.

Even so, the money, I could live without.

What killed me, though, was that Andrea had gone dark on me. After the game last night, I’d gone to her place but got no answer, just like with all my calls and texts. She’d faded into the background, like I used to do with Tinder hookups I didn’t want anything to do with after one night. If I weren’t so angry, I might have found some irony in that.

I couldn’t go anywhere in the city without getting recognized and hounded. The harder I tried to defend myself, the less people believed the truth. I needed Andrea, not just to help me clear my name, but because I just needed her. She’d become a part of my life, and I wanted her to stay there.

I pulled out my phone and gave her one more call.

Pick up, babe. Pick up.

No answer. Again. I think I’d called her a couple dozen times by now.

I opened the bottle of Jack and poured myself another whisky, neat.

George Thorogood would be proud of me, I thought, drinking in the morning. All I needed now was a scotch and a beer.

I sat down at the TV and did something I almost never do—I turned on SportsCenter. They were doing a Saturday morning special—featuring me. One of my old, shitty Instagram pictures was on the huge flat-screen behind the talking heads. The talking point listed in big letters below them read: Is Jake Napleton the next Johnny Football?

One of the announcers blabbed, “Now folks, we all know the story of Johnny Football, taken number one in the draft, but plagued for years by too much booze, women, and money—and how is Jake Napleton any different? I mean, look at the guy in this picture. He looks like someone who would be more likely to haze you at a frat party—not someone you would trust being around your kid. And will we ever get this story straight about what happened with him and this little boy he was supposedly helping?”

I shook my head at the TV and took a nice long swallow of my whisky as they flashed to perhaps the most unflattering picture I had available to the public. It was an old Facebook photo that showed me with my eyes half open.

Hey, we all have our bad moments.

Then I made my second mistake of the morning—I fired up Twitter on my phone.

#BigUnitsaphony was the number two trending hashtag. Now, I have thick as fuck skin. And there’s been a lot of words used to describe me. But phony? I might be as big of an asshole as they come, but at least I’m genuine in my assholery.

People were tweeting at me from all over the damn country, hell, the whole world. None of these people had any idea what had actually happened, but still they felt they had the right to tell me to go fuck myself.

It was up to me to change the public’s perception, even if it was too late, but I felt helpless against the constant stream of hate. I wasn’t going to apologize for my past behavior, but I needed to take full ownership of it. I needed to think instead of just react and stop being my own worst enemy. It was time for me to grow the fuck up.

“I don’t know, Chuck,” the other announcer chimed in. I looked back at the TV. He was another one of those stupid talking heads who felt entitled to an opinion even though he had never played professional sports himself. “But one thing is for sure. Good riddance. Can you imagine having to pay more than one hundred million dollars over five years to a guy like this? And the other thing is that he stinks. He’s a joke. He was a one-hit wonder. Sure, he had some highlight-worthy performances in the last few years—and a stellar first half of the season—but the Jaguars are almost certainly better off without him going into the playoffs. Did you see how hard he got shelled by Arizona? He’s an embarrassment to the city of—”

I turned off the TV. The talking head had no idea what he was talking about.

Ten seconds later, my phone buzzed. For a moment I considered chucking my phone out the window without checking to see who had called, but for some reason I didn’t. I was glad I didn’t when I saw that it was my sister, Eva.

“Well hello there, sis. Wasn’t expecting your call. Aren’t you supposed to be undercover or something?”

“Shhh. How did you know that?”

“You called me and told me you were on a life-or-death mission the other night, and that if you died I should donate all of your things to charity. I thought you were joking.”

“Ha. I must have had a few tequilas that night. Anyways, I can’t talk about the undercover piece right now. But let’s talk about you. There’s a media firestorm right now. You got released? What the hell is going on?”

I filled her in on the whole situation, as concisely as I could without leaving any of the important details out.

“So let’s get this straight. You stood up for what you believed in—punching out some asshole who was being super creepy to his ex—and then you tried to help one of the South Side kids. And you ended up crucified on social media.”

I nodded. “That’s pretty much it.”

The phone went silent for a minute.

“Eva? You there?”

After a delayed pause, Eva spoke again. “Sorry, I put the phone on mute so I could curse the world for a second. I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase ‘No good deed goes unpunished’?”

“Yeah.”

“This is you right now. Isn’t it ironic? All those years of being a womanizing asshole, and now it sounds like you’re trying to not be that asshole, and this stuff happens.”

The irony wasn’t lost on me.

“You’re spot on. That really doesn’t help me, though. I don’t know what to do. I’m finished.”

“Goddamn it, Napleton. You’re not finished. No way. Why are you giving a crap about what people think of you all of a sudden? In middle school, how many times did we tell those gangbangers to go to hell when they pressured us to join them? We weren’t popular. We didn’t care what they thought of us. Now all of a sudden some Twitter twats are sitting on their couch eating potato chips and yelling at their TVs, so you think they know you? They think they know what happened? Fuck that. Never let the haters win. Put down the bottle of Jack and go get your girl back.” Eva paused and chucked. “Wow, I just made a great rhyme. You catch that?”

A smile flashed on my face. “How the hell did you know I was drinking whisky?”

“That whole sibling connection thing. Genetics. You can’t see it, but I’m tapping my head right now to emphasize our slight telepathy.”

I sighed and put the whisky down.

“Thanks, sis. Love you. You be careful with this undercover shit you’re doing.”

“Shhhh. You didn’t hear that. I know you won’t tell anyone, but it’s pretty serious. Love you too. Go figure out how to fix this.”

I hung up the phone, and as soon as I did, I felt strangely energized. Even if I didn’t see her very often anymore, I was lucky to have Eva there for me when I needed her.

I picked up the phone to dial Andrea’s number, but I already knew she wasn’t going to answer.

Well, fuck it. It was time to do this the old fashioned way, before cell phones were invented.

If she wasn’t already gone, I’d go to her apartment and fucking grovel. And if she’d gone back to Tennessee, then to Tennessee I’d go. Nothing was going to stop me.

Damned if I was gonna sit here and become a self-fulfilling prophecy of being the next Johnny fucking Football, falling from grace.

Even if my reputation was going to be tarnished forever, I still needed to give Andrea and me a shot.